15mm Sci Fi: Killer Space Vegetables & Solo Battle Report

 

Some more 'bad guys' painted up for the growing 15mm Si Fi collection, this time it's a whole lot of deadly flora, 'Day of the Triffids' style.

Bought about ten years ago, I got these out to alleviate painting the endless white straps of my AWI collection and then promptly gave to my wife to do... she offered, honest!

Alternate Armies

These are mostly 'Triffic' (not Triffids) from Alternate Armies.

Above and below are from the SHMP25 Triffic Killer Plants pack.

Below are some Death Spores from AA's HOF46 Creegan Doom Spores pack.

Khurasan Miniatures

A score of Triffids more on the 'human' analogy - these kinda have arms and are holding 'weapons', with a great colour job. All from their Alien Civilizations Listing.

A couple of packs of Botanoid plantman heavy weapons specialists.

Some Botanoid plantman commanders and high commander.

And finally a swarm (several packs) of Botanoid plantman battleteam.

Battle Report

Nearly as far back as I bought these guys, we've been developing a home-grown set of rules we're calling Universal. I think it's finally reached its zenith in terms of development and I used them and a supplementary pack to run some of Khurasan's Defence Force troopers through a jungle romp.

The board is set up with random placement of the KSVs with an objective down one end of the board - in this case an APC. This was done by dividing the board up into a 10cm x 10cm grid and rolling 2 x 1d10s for general placement - then scatter dice and a 1d10 for final placement - this took a while. 

The random placement added a few KSVs right next to the objective. But with the board set, I headed the platoon down an edge of the board, trying to avoid certain death.

But once the good guys have moved, the plants move by themselves using a scatter dice and a 1d10.

My strategy worked all the way up the board until it didn't and a plant randomly moved into contact with the squaddies. 

They fired and cleared out a whole bunch, taking a couple of casualties... 

... and triggered reactive responses by the plants who (within a certain range) headed directly towards the troops.

Things were looking grim as the plants surrounded the troops so they went quiet again and tried sneaking the rest of the way...

... only to have their way to the transport blocked.

More firing ensued, drawing in further nearby plants, with only two death spores left to get past.

With this being the first real wargame I've played in nearly five years, its nice to know that I can still make dumb decisions, even when playing on my own. I was so fixated on getting to the transport that instead of shooting up the plants some more, I ran at the spores, triggering their attack and firing back at them.

The result is that the troops were worn down to 50% and failed their leadership test. They should have gone fleeing off into the jungle to meet their death, or until rallied, but I prefer the above result where they all reached the safety of their transport...

It was great to play a solo game with these figures  - given I live in the middle of nowheresville and  especially with the excellent paint job from my wife. Even my step son came up with a game of his own using the same figures and rules, and a 60 x 60 gridded play area we made for DnD.